The impact of AI on marketing is difficult to miss with the proliferation of mediocre content and approaches flooding marketing and sales channels. Audiences are becoming more savvy by calling out ‘AI slop’ and, in some instances, losing trust in businesses whose marketing outputs are deemed to be poorly executed by A

According to LinkedIn’s 2025 B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey, 95% of B2B marketers now use AI at least weekly, and 65% are using it daily. However, the real question now isn’t whether marketers are using AI, but whether we are using it well enough so that we don’t alienate our current and future customers. 

So, where does this leave experienced marketers? In Gartner’s 2023/24 survey, 26% of marketing leaders planned to reduce staff numbers specifically because of generative AI. And following on from this, in Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey, 39% of CMOs are actively reducing headcount and cutting agency budgets. 

This leads to the question of whether marketing experience is being devalued in the age of AI.

When anyone can generate a strategy or a mass of creative content in seconds, it is all too easy to assume experience matters less than it used to. If anything, my 25 year career has taught me, it is the opposite that is true.  Knowing what good looks like has never been more important, and that’s where experience comes into its own. If everyone has access to the same tools, what else can businesses compete on?

Patterns open up opportunities

To really understand the true capabilities of AI, understanding the foundations that it has been built is important. Large language models (LLMs) have been trained on existing data and then produce their responses based on patterns and thinking based on that. Therefore, AI responses are derived from things that have been done before, existing concepts, rather than new ones, with responses replicating or spotting gaps in what already exists.

But you could argue ‘what happens to truly new ideas and approaches?’. This is the space where I believe that experience comes into its own. AI is great for building on trends and data that already exists, so the gap left is where first-hand experiences, critical thinking and knowledge that hasn’t been captured by a LLM has space to flourish and come into its own.

Knowing what good looks like

People need experience and critical thinking to know what good marketing looks like. A lack of experience may lead employees to accept the first output and responses that AI produces as verbatim. 

The air of certainty that AI often confidently emits can lull users into a false sense of certainty. Without hard-earned first-hand experience and working knowledge of the task at hand, marketers starting out can easily come unstuck as they are still learning their craft. There is likely to be a lack of understanding of the wider business context as well as the micro and macro-economic environment, and not necessarily knowing where potential pitfalls lie and the impact that this can have overall on marketing activities.

According to a research study of debating students at  the LSE, stronger performers gained more from AI support than weaker ones, because they could refine and challenge outputs rather than accept them at face value. Senior marketers with experience are more likely to be aware of pitfalls and attuned to spotting what does and does not work in a business and marketing context. Experience developed from years of hands-on doing rather than being solely reliant on the patterns spotted by AI to formulate a solution.

Experience counts

A study by the Harvard Business School  and the University of California at Berkeley also makes the case that experience matters. They researched business owners using AI  and found that people with stronger existing skills achieved better business outcomes because they had the judgement to know which AI suggestions were worth acting on.

Therefore, when I am looking at whether experience is being devalued in the age of AI, my answer currently is yes. But there is an opportunity for business leaders who want to gain a competitive advantage by marrying senior marketing expertise and knowledge with AI. This will enable senior marketers to take a more strategic approach, combining their skills and first-hand know-how with AI tools to  create new concepts and ideas faster while iterating and improving tactical performance quicker than ever.

The question for business leaders is no longer whether their teams are using AI. It’s whether they have the experience and judgement to use it well.